Paul Strathern - Kant in 90 Minutes

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Paul Strathern has lectured in philosophy and mathematics and now lives and writes in London. A Somerset Maugham prize winner, he is also the author of books on history and travel as well as five novels. His articles have appeared in a great many publications, including the Observer (London) and the Irish Times. His own degree in philosophy was earned at Trinity College, Dublin.

NOW PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES:

Thomas Aquinas in 90 Minutes
Aristotle in 90 Minutes
St. Augustine in 90 Minutes
Berkeley in 90 Minutes
Confucius in 90 Minutes
Derrida in 90 Minutes
Descartes in 90 Minutes
Foucault in 90 Minutes

Hegel in 90 Minutes
Heidegger in 90 Minutes
Hume in 90 Minutes
Kant in 90 Minutes
Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes
Leibniz in 90 Minutes
Locke in 90 Minutes
Machiavelli in 90 Minutes

Marx in 90 Minutes
Nietzsche in 90 Minutes

Plato in 90 Minutes
Rousseau in 90 Minutes
Bertrand Russell in 90 Minutes
Sartre in 90 Minutes
Schopenhauer in 90 Minutes
Socrates in 90 Minutes
Spinoza in 90 Minutes
Wittgenstein in 90 Minutes

IN PREPARATION:

Dewey, Freud, J. S. Mill

David Appelbaum, The Vision of Kant (Element Books, 1995)

Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (Harvard University Press, 1992)

Paul Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought (Oxford University Press, 1989)

Norman K. Smith, ed., Critique of Pure Reason (St. Martins, 1969)

Immanuel Kant was born April 22, 1724, in the Baltic city of Knigsberg, then the capital of the isolated German province of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia). Kants ancestors had emigrated from Scotland in the preceding century and may well have been related to the notorious seventeenth-century Scottish preacher Andrew Cant, who is said to have been the origin of the verb to cant with regard to the use of jargona family trait which was to reappear with a vengeance in the philosopher.

At the time of Kants birth East Prussia was recovering from the devastation of war and plague, which had reduced the population by over half. Kant grew up in an atmosphere of pious poverty. He was the fourth child of the family, which eventually included five sisters and one other brother. Kants Scottish father was a cutter of leather straps who jocularly claimed that he could never make both ends meet either at home or at work. Kant always remained respectful of his likable but financially harassed father, and as a child is said to have enjoyed watching him deftly cutting up pieces of leather for harnesses. Yet according to the philosophical psychologist Ben-Ami Scharfstein, in the light of his fathers dexterity Kants great clumsiness with his hands is therefore noteworthy.